


Tip

by Metal_Chocobo



Category: Oz - L. Frank Baum
Genre: Gen, Gender Issues, Playing Hooky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-09-28 06:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20421251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metal_Chocobo/pseuds/Metal_Chocobo
Summary: Most of the time Ozma didn’t mind being princess of Oz. Sometimes she did.





	Tip

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this a couple years ago and recently remembered I never actually posted it.

Most of the time Ozma didn’t mind being princess of Oz. She liked the fact she could ensure the happiness and well being of all of her kingdom’s citizens. She was able to settle disputes within the population and protect Oz from any outside threats, which lead to a wealthy nation, especially in what really mattered. Ozma also had a much happier life than she did as a child, surrounded by friends and wealth she never went hungry nor suffered beatings. Overall it was a very satisfactory life.

Sometimes though being Ozma felt constraining. Her whereabouts needed to be accounted for every single second of the day and if her subjects lost track of her for a moment, chaos ensued. She had to present herself as the perfect fairy princess and the wise benign ruler without ever breaking character. That was awful hard for someone who spent their childhood roaming the farmlands of the Gillikin Country as a little boy without anyone ever paying him any attention. He had been free to do as he pleased with little consequence, as Old Mombi beat him no matter what he did, so he chose to do what he wanted.

Except for Old Mombi, Ozma had loved that life. In the end of her time as that little boy he had finally freed himself of that wretched hag and sought out a new life of his own. That life never meant to include sovereignty, much less a change in gender. He hadn’t wanted to change—he loved being himself—but Glinda, wise benevolent Glinda, insisted that he had been born a girl and therefore needed to be a girl again; not only for herself, but for Oz.

So he caved to the pressure and became Ozma. Most of the time Ozma was pretty okay being a girl. Most of the time. But Glinda was wrong—she never needed to be a girl and in fact Ozma would have preferred staying a boy. However, she never told anyone about her feelings. There was no point, as there was nothing she could do about it and revealing the knowledge would only burden her subjects. After all, physical transformations were only performed by wicked witches and they no longer had any in Oz. No one knew how she really felt, not even her most cherished friend and heir, Dorothy.

When everything became too suffocating Ozma would abscond from the Emerald City. To keep the others from panicking, she used the pretense of retiring to her rooms and did not wish to be disturbed for any reason to buy a few hours away. She’d sneak out of her room through a secret door that led to the stables. She had made it with her magic after first realizing the tiara was too heavy to wear all the time. There Ozma would saddle the Sawhorse and blast out of the city limits at his fastest trot before anyone realized he had a passenger.

She suspected Jellia Jamb knew about her excursions. The maid never hinted at having any special knowledge, but Ozma knew she was routinely underestimated by all of the city’s residents. Jellia Jamb knew the palace inside and out, which meant she had surely discovered the secret door eons ago. She may not understand the pressures Ozma withstood, but she respected her princess’s secrets and privacy. For that Ozma was grateful.

As much as her heart always longed to go north, Ozma never turned the Sawhorse that way. There was nothing left in Gillikin Country for her—at least nothing she could reach in her current form. The wilds of her childhood were forever inaccessible for a ruling princess, meant only for untamed wanderers with no obligations or responsibilities to their name. Instead, she always pointed the Sawhorse west.

As soon as the foliage began to turn yellow Ozma slowed her steed’s charge. For her destination, her only getaway, lay just within Winkie Country. When the giant pumpkin finally came into view it always put a smile on Ozma’s face. For it meant she was finally in reach of the one person who had always treated her the same, no matter what her physical appearance.

When as she reached the great pumpkin’s yard, Ozma hopped off the Sawhorse’s back and turned him loose to roam the grounds as he wished, for he had no interest in the master of the house. She never bothered to enter the house, as he never spent any time inside during fair weather.

“Jack!” Ozma greeted her favorite pumpkinhead when she spotted him behind the house. He sat on a wooden chair with a large pumpkin sitting on his knee.

“Father!” he greeted her, waving a curved carving knife. His other hand was wrapped around the half finished jack-o-lantern to keep it balanced.

She walked up to him and gently moved the pumpkin to the ground before pulling Jack into a tight hug. Neither one would have been happy to see the poor pumpkin tumble down and split open. He was still as stiff and brittle as dry kindling and smelled faintly of sawdust mixed with overripe pumpkin. In other words, Jack was the same as he had always been. 

Ozma felt a little of the tension in her shoulders ease as it always did whenever she visited her pumpkinhead. She dropped into Jack’s spare chair and picked up his unfinished new head. Without a word, Jack handed over his carving knife, like he did whenever his esteemed parent came for a visit. He never asked her about why she came, how long she was staying, or news of the Emerald City on these visits and for that Ozma loved him more than she already did.

“Were you hoping for a particular expression?” Ozma asked as she surveyed the pumpkin.

“I thought a thoughtful one would be a nice change,” Jack said. “I want to see if it will make people laugh less when I speak this month. Maybe they’ll think I am worth listening to once in a while like the Scarecrow.”

“Oh Jack, sometimes you have silly ideas, but I find you are always worth listening to,” Ozma said.

She carved the best thoughtful expression she could design onto the new pumpkin. Adding the artful flourish of an unexpected eyebrow above his left eye, she figured it was just the touch this new pumpkin needed. Hopefully it would garner Jack some compliments on his new head. Of course Ozma was the first to compliment it when he jammed it onto his shoulders.

“Do you think that with this new head they’ll really see me? The real me I mean?” Jack asked. He twisted the head back and forth as he peered into the mirror he had hung on a tree for exactly this purpose. “Is my head on straight?”

All Ozma could do was squeeze his shoulder. For how could she assure him that they would see the real him when they never saw the real her? After all, her form didn’t regularly change. That was the problem.

She stayed for the funeral of Jack’s old head. It didn’t last very long—Jack only had to dig a shallow hole for his old head. Animals weren’t that interested in eating buried ones when the pumpkinhead willingly allowed them to eat spares from his garden. There was no tombstone or other marker for the gravesite; there never was. Eventually, he would reuse the site in a few years once the old pumpkin had properly degraded. Jack said a few words about the quality of his previous head before lowering it into the grave. As soon as he buried it, the funeral was over.

Ozma ate a quick meal of bread and cheese and then got back on the Sawhorse. The return ride to the Emerald City was as speedy as it was silent. They reached the city just after sunset and snuck back in through a little used northern entrance to the city. As soon as they crept into the stables at the softest patter the Sawhorse could manage, Ozma unsaddled him and returned to her rooms through the secret door.

She was tired and wanted to sleep in her luxurious goose down bed, but Ozma had just spent most of the day avoiding her responsibilities. The Wizard had stuffed almost a dozen notes under her door, as he was wont to do when she was in seclusion; all of which he hoped would get her to emerge sooner and deal with the crisis. If she wasn’t aware of the fact he could normally handle these situations unaided and simply hoped to use them as a lure, she would have stripped him of his position ages ago. He had more than enough skills to find one of his lost piglets without her assistance.

Still, Ozma dutifully read every note so that she could respond accordingly. None of them truly required her rolling up her sleeves and personally dealing with them, but she knew she would have to treat them with utmost seriousness momentarily. At least the note from Dorothy made her smile. It said that Dorthy had heard from Jellia Jamb that Ozma felt ‘under the weather’ and hoped she would feel better soon. It was with that smile Ozma was able to leave her rooms through the proper door. She was unsurprised to find her faithful maid waiting nearby.

“Your highness,” Jellia Jamb greeted her with a curtsey.

“Good evening, Jellia Jamb, have you been waiting for me here all day?” Ozma asked. She assumed she hadn’t, but the maid was in the exact position as she had been in when Ozma retired shortly after breakfast.

“No mistress, but I had a sudden feeling while I was in the rose garden assisting Trot and Button Bright that I might be needed elsewhere imminently,” Jellia Jamb replied. Her face was a perfect mask of deferential politeness.

Unlike Jellia Jamb, Ozma was unable to repress a smile. The statement was seemingly innocuous on the surface, but it held meaning for those who understood the palace layout. The rose garden was one of the many fabulous gardens on the grounds, but it had the distinction of being the only garden that could look onto the back entrance to the royal stables—if one bothered to push their head through one of the topiary shrubberies. Ozma glanced over Jellia Jamb’s uniform for any signs of leaves, twigs, or tears, but the maid’s uniform was pristine.

“How perceptive of you,” Ozma said. “Was Dorothy in the rose garden with Trot and Button Bright?”

“No, your highness. The princess had seemed rather dour when she first heard you were unable to spend time with her today. I suggested that perhaps she would enjoy a rousing game of croquet with Scraps and some of the others,” Jellia Jamb explained. “Last I checked, the game was still in full swing with all the participants and onlookers in high spirits.”

“Excellent work.”

At her praise, Jellia Jamb smiled and curtseyed again. “Would your highness like to go to dinner now? The dinner gong should be ringing soon and after a long day of rest and meditation, it would be understandable if your highness were hungry. The kitchen did not receive any response to their lunch overtures.”

“Yes,” Ozma said, though it was the ride and not meditation that left her famished. “However, I will eat in the breakfast room tonight. I do not wish to dispel the noise and merriment of the great hall’s revelers, but I would prefer a quieter and more intimate meal.”

“It will be done,” Jellia Jamb promised, curtseying a third time. “Would your highness prefer to dine alone or have some company?”

“I would love Dorothy’s company, if she will consent to mine,” Ozma began, which brought a smile to Jellia Jamb’s lips. In all of their years together, Dorothy had never once turned down Ozma’s companionship. “And perhaps a few more of our less boisterous friends.”

“I will inform Princess Dorothy immediately. I am sure she will be delighted.”

“Lovely.”

With that in place, Ozma was once again secured by her position and duties as the one and only sovereign ruler of Oz.


End file.
